Often a highly sought after beer, wine, or spirit will be released and you can feel the rush in the air as lines form and waiting lists are compiled to taste or purchase the rare libation. The question is should you spend much time trying to find a whale? IMO if it isn’t out of your way stick your head in the store and see if they might have what you are after. In most cases with whales they are very good if not excellent, but you can typically find something as good or almost as good with zero effort so putting forth effort to find a whale is not time well spent. I’ve had and sampled my share of whale beers and almost always the beer is good, but not mindblowing. Take Minneapolis Town Hall Masala Mama India Pale Ale for example. At one time it was a royal pain to find, but eventually I was sent a growler. In the past the brewery was one which was sought out, but at the most recent GABF they had no line at all. So enjoy what you have around you and if you run into a whale, celebrate your good luck, but I wouldn’t exert too much effort to secure something made of unobtanium.

Today is the Beer Drinker of the Year competition at Wynkoop in Denver. It starts at 7pm and you should attend even if you did not sign up ahead of time. It will be a blast and I’ll post about the winner next week.

I got to thinking about police shootings and whether or not there was validity to the protests which often include signs and chants which would cause one to conclude a segment of the population feels trivialized. The stats I am using appeared yesterday on CBS and I apologize in advance for not being able to cite anything other than the percentage of African-Americans shot by police. I calculated the percentage at 26% in 2014 and 24% in 2015 and the good news is shootings are on the decline overall. For our discussion, we’ll use 25% as the number of shootings per year of African-Americans. An article in the Washington Post I read indicated 50% of those shot by police are White. That leaves 25% who are Hispanic or other. When I was a kid I recall hearing 18% of the population was African-American, but today that number widely reported as 13%. So it depends on how you look at the numbers as to whether African-Americans are shot more often by police. As a percentage of the population, they are killed more often since 25% of the shootings involve a race which comprises 13% of the nation. But if you look at the overall number of police shootings the conclusion would be Whites are shot more often. So you must decide how you want to evaluate the data.

One thing is certain if you want to avoid being shot by police you must comply with their commands. That will not 100% assure you will come away unscathed, but will certainly improve the odds of your life being spared. Don’t break the law or appear to be breaking the law in the first place and your chances of a negative encounter with officers is dramatically reduced.

The meme below popped up today and while the initial reaction is exactly no, it is not because of the last line of the meme, it is because the test is not instantaneous. In NC to purchase a handgun you have to get a pistol purchase permit from your county sherriff. That PPP requires a background check. At the point of sale for long guns there is also a NICS background check. The PPP has a maximum waiting period for the permit to be approved or denied and the NICS check is instant. So how do you implement a program to drug test people purchasing guns where the results are instant. Also how do you pay for such a test? Most would say the person purchasing the firearm should pay, but the equation pointed out by the meme was for governmental programs so the taxpayers bear the burden. There are 12 panel test strips for less than $10, but someone has to watch the process, adminster the test, and report the results. That drives up the cost to average $42 according to a quick Google search. So $42 each to be paid by the government because it would be an undue burden on the person purchasing a firearm. In December 2015 Time published the number of NICS checks performed through that point in the year and it was 19,827,376. So $42 x 19,827,376 = overflow of my calculator, let’s punch that into the computer to yeild: $832,749,792 or almost 1 BILLION DOLLARS!!! I can already tell you I do not want to pay for that either as a taxpayer or as someone who may purchase a firearm. Most of the drugs tested on a 12 panel test only remain in the system for a up 7 days, a few go beyond that point, but it is pretty useless in the grand scheme of things. I believe where welfare recipients have been tested the vast majority have passed the test so even a testing program for those on govermental programs has limited benefit. Better IMO would be to have random drug testing for governmental programs. That would save money and still do what the program was desiged to do which is ensure money from the government is not funding a drug habit. Now the final piece of the puzzle is what do you do in areas where marijuana is legal? The Feds say illegal and adminster the NICS check so I assume any drug use would be a disqualification, but if something is legal where you are it seems to me it should be allowed to be in your system. I’m heading to Denver in a few weeks and while I do not do drugs or smoke marijuana, I might find myself near an area downtown where someone is legally smoking dope. If I get second hand smoke from that exposure would I test positive on a drug screen? I don’t know, but ultimately any drug testing burden should be shouldered by the government and I am against needless governmental spending so I would oppose testing for firearm purchases because of the costs involved and because it imposes an undue burden on the populace.

Recently I read an article where some had mixed up .300 AAC Blackout (300 BLK) rounds in their non-dedicated rifles with disastrous results. My first suggestion would be to dedicate a lower receiver and magazines to the round, but I realize that may not be practical for some and does negate the benefit of being able to change out uppers on the AR to create a different setup. At a minimum dedicate magazines to your 300 BLK rounds so the mistake never happens to you. For those unfamiliar with the round it does not require a dedicated magazine and so you can load your .223/5.56 AR magazine. With the low cost of magazines currently simply purchase extra magazines and mark them as 300 BLK. The issue comes when someone inadvertently tries to shoot the a 300 BLK in a .223/5.56 or vice versa. Because the 300 BLK is 7.65 x 35 and the 5.56 is 5.56 x 45 the shorter and larger diameter 300 BLK will fit in a .223/5.56 chamber as depicted here.

As you can imagine it would be a disaster to try and fire a 300 BLK round in a .223/5.56 and you could suffer a horrible injury when the bullet has no ability to travel outside the chamber. Spend a few bucks on dedicated magazines and mark them for the round so you never make the mistake while shooting your 300 BLK. If you are worried about appearance then color fill some part of the 300 BLK upper and color fill some part of the dedicated magazines. With a few minutes of preparation you can be sure this mistake is one you never make.

I was on a homebrew discussion site and someone asked about acquiring a small setup for distillation. While many may desire to give it a whirl and it is not rocket science it is ILLEGAL to distill alcohol for consumption at home. For that reason we don’t discuss it. What’s the first rule of Fight Club?

USA Today ran an article yesterday about the BJCP entitled How to graduate from beer pong to beer judge. In it Assistant Communication Director and Grand Master BJCP Judge Dennis Mitchell discussed the BJCP and beer styles. It’s a quick read, but well worth your time!